Friday, 28 September 2012

Buried among white rooms
Whose lights in clusters beam
Like suddenly-caused pain,
And where behind rows of mesh
Uneasy shifting resumes
As sterilizers steam
And the routine begins again
Of putting questions to flesh

That no one would think to ask
But a Ph.D. with a beard
And nympho wife who --

.................................But
There, I was saying, are found
The bushy, T-shaped mask,
And below, the smaller, eared
Head like a grave nut,
And the arms folded round.

The routine administration of pain to helpless animals in the interests of "research" (read: "obtaining of government and corporate funding") is an obscenity that's haunted my path for the past 25 years as I tread tentatively past a "facility" that arose on a spot formerly occupied by some ninety varieties of exotic trees, brought in late in the 19th century to provide that sort of grove which is proverbially an intrinsic feature of academe.

When the construction began, outraged citizens and students expressed resistance and protest, first "peacefully", and then eventually a bit more aggressively, scaling and "occupying" (not without some inconvenience and risk) for nearly two weeks a hundred-foot high crane being used in the construction.

Of course the protest proved futile.

Those who pass by the place now have no idea what its history might be, or what might lie beneath it.

I think Larkin's poem is not well known because its moral message is too tough to take. The difficult word "nympho" is undoubtedly a factor in its relegation to the state of untouchability. But in my reading, the spasm of disgust that attends "a PH.D. with a beard" is perhaps even stronger.

Larkin of course is rarely nice, and this prevents him being read.

But it's evasive, and probably also cowardly, to attempt to speak of licensed institutional sadism in "nice" language.

They are married.They observe the othersgoing exotic places, a PH. D. or twothe window is the onlyprivate place arounda house so full.

It is comfortable enoughat the sillbut limiting.There are thoseheavy linksto a future that tradesnaturefor something elseabstract, idea-like.It stands for freedombut isn't that at all.The little monkeys seemcontent enoughcontent with gazing.The chains are warm.

Yes, that terrible pause, carefully yet also with apparent naturalness built into the structure, does so much. The space, the missed heartbeat, a kind of hinge; or a kind of quietly yawning crevasse.

There are moments when the seeming arbitrariness of a formal symmetry turns out to provide the dramatic pivot in a work. This sort of thing doesn't just happen, of course; to make it happen, one must be a master of form, and capable of exploiting it to a purpose.

The rarity of this sort of effect in what one sees of contemporary practise would comprise yet another sign that this is a dying (if not dead) art.